After bringing his new album to Apple Music and Spotify, fans are suing Kanye West claiming they purchased subscriptions to West-backed music app Tidal on the promise the album would be exclusive to the service.
The report from Associated Press notes the lawsuit is a proposed class action filed in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco. It claims Tidal could have benefited as much as $84 million from new subscribers through the promotion and exclusivity promise for West’s new album Life of Pablo.
Perhaps the most notable piece of evidence is a tweet from West himself, part of a longer series of rants during the launch of the album, where the artist claimed the album would “never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.”
“Mr. West’s promise of exclusivity also had a grave impact on consumer privacy,” the lawsuit states, noting that users’ credit card information, music preferences and other personal information have been collected… “We believe that we will be able to prove to a jury that Mr. West and Tidal tricked millions of people into subscribing to their services and that they will ultimately be held accountable for what they did.”
While Tidal already said the album was streamed around 250 million times in just over its first week of release, the lawsuit claims the service also gained around 2 million new subscribers. Tidal costs $10/month for an individual subscription.
And Tidal recently launched a lawsuit of its own over subscriber figures, with a report last month claiming owner Jay Z is going after the previous owners of Tidal seeking compensation for over reporting the true number of subscribers to the service.
